When Rose and Ianto had returned to the main hub, Jack had sent him home, with instructions to not come back for forty-eight hours. To take the time to grieve.
Ianto hadn't said anything to Jack in response, merely collecting his belongings, handing in his weapon and leaving in silence with one last grateful squeeze to Rose's hand.
There wasn't much said between the rest of the team once Ianto had left the building and everyone seemed to be moving on autopilot. Owen and Gwen moved the bodies to the Torchwood morgue, Tosh went to work hiding any connection Torchwood had to the doctor Ianto had hired, and the delivery girl Lisa had murdered. Rose set to work dismantling the cyber conversion unit as the only one with any experience with the equipment, and Jack seemed to be distracting himself with cleaning up blood and checking Myfanwy for injuries.
Once the conversion unit was nothing more than a pile of scrap metal waiting to be melted down, Rose went looking for Jack. While she'd been busy dismantling, everyone else had gone home for the night and Rose wove her way through the destruction still evident in the main hub.
She found Jack in his office, one of the only rooms that had been unlocked that had avoided any serious damage, but he didn't look up at her when she opened the glass door, just remained sitting in his chair, arms resting on his legs and hands hanging loose between his knees as he stared at the floor, lost in his thoughts.
"Come on, Captain, let's check you out," she said softly, breaking the silence and watching Jack's head whip up at he stared at her in surprise.
"Rose..."
"I bet you didn't let Owen near you with a medkit," she continued, ignoring the broken note to his voice as she lifted the box of medical supplies in her hands. Jack let out a small choked laugh before standing and pulling the small blonde into a crushing hug and she let him, allowing her free hand come up around him in response and drawing her own measure of comfort from the warmth emanating from the American.
Neither of them bothered keeping track of how long the hug went on, but eventually Rose felt Jack's arms loosen slightly and let the hand that had wound around his waist pat against his back gently, "Come and sit down, let me take a look at that lip if nothing else," she requested, indicating the sharp split that Ianto's punch had put on his face.
Jack sighed, but nodded and returned to his chair with Rose following. She sat on the edge of his desk using her feet to pull the wheeled chair closer and it was a sign of her friends state of mind that the motion didn't pull a flirtatious comment.
He calmly let her angle his head and clean the wound on his upper lip without comment, and when Rose checked she could see that he was lost in thought again. A few medical strips to stop the injury splitting open any further and Rose released Jack's jaw and let her hands fall to her thighs.
"What are you thinking?" she asked simply, and Jack blinked at her before offering a weak smile.
"I'd forgotten how good you are at that," he said and Rose raised her eyebrows, "At getting me to drop my guard... it always worked on the Doctor too, you know."
Rose laughed, "Never well enough, I could never get a straight answer out of him about why you didn't come with us on Satellite Five." It was the coldness suddenly filling Jack's gaze that made Rose pause and she blinked at him startled, "What? What's wrong?"
"He never said?" Jack asked, and Rose shook her head.
"Never said what?"
"I didn't stay behind... he left me there." Jack told her, "I woke up surrounded by Dalek dust, and heard the Tardis engines... I made it just in time to watch her disappear with the Doctor inside. I don't know what happened..."
"He sent me home," Rose said, and Jack raised his head to meet her gaze, and nodded.
"Right, so how did the Tardis get back?"
"I flew her," she answered simply and Jack's jaw dropped open.
"What?"
"I... I couldn't just leave you both there, so I tried to get her to go back, but she wouldn't... and it took a couple of days, but mum got a tow truck and I forced open her heart-"
"Rose..."
"I remember looking into the heart of the Tardis," Rose continued, unable to stop now she'd started, "and I was determined to have her help to save the Doctor... both of you, and there was bright gold light, and singing, and that's the last thing I remember until I woke up on the floor, and the Doctor was there, flying her and we'd left Satellite Five and... Then he regenerated," Rose finished softly.
"You never said..." Jack murmured, eyes wide and Rose frowned.
"You never said you can't die," she shot back, frowning at him and Jack flushed, surprising her, "Did you think I'd have left you there by choice?" Rose asked suddenly wondering if this had been the reason for the mans reticence with her since her return, and she had her answer when Jack looked away.
"I didn't think the Doctor would either, but..." he let the sentence trail with a shrug of his shoulders and Rose frowned.
"When I said we should go back for you, he told me you were busy... 'rebuilding the Earth', were his exact words if I remember correctly," she told Jack firmly and she saw him glance at her with cautious hope building in his blue eyes.
"You were going-"
"Of course I wanted to go back for you!" she snapped, slapping his arm, "and trust me, I'll be finding out why he lied to me when we eventually find that bloody alien again!"
Rose was angry now, her breathing heavy and she could feel the burn of tears in the back of her eyes at the pain their abandonment must have put Jack through, but his warm smile surprised her and she shook her head, "What are you grinning about?" she demanded, still furious with the absent Time Lord.
"Nothing at all, Rosie,"
"Oh shut it," she told him, sighing and letting her frame relax as she forced herself to let go of the anger for now.
"So... can you really not die?" she asked and Jack sighed, leaning back in his chair and putting his feet on the desk beside her, ankles crossed.
"Not yet... been killed a few hundred times now; I always wake up."
"Never been killed by a Cyberman before though, I'll bet, how did you know that wouldn't be it?" she asked, and the long moment of silence answered for her, "You didn't know; You just guessed."
"I hoped... Didn't want to leave you alone, before you found the Doctor after all," he teased gently when he saw the pain in her face, and slowly his smile faded.
"Your name is on the list of the dead from Canary Wharf, Rose," Jack said softly, "I thought you'd been killed by a Cyberman or a Dalek for far too long, I wasn't about to let it happen again... You're the sister I never had, if it's the last thing I ever do I'll keep you safe so you can find the Doctor again," he promised and Rose shook her head in disbelief.
"My hero," she told him playfully, and Jack couldn't help but laugh.
Martha entered the control room of the Tardis with a bit of hesitance to her step. The Doctor had said one trip. He'd stretched that into once to the future and once to the past, but now she was almost expecting the alien to drop her back home the moment she showed her face in the console room. He surprised her though, as when he heard her enter the room he suddenly appeared from beneath the console and that dopey grin that made her heartbeat speed up was plastered across his face.
"Martha! Just in time, Tardis picked up on some odd readings in the vortex that need checking out," he announced, and bounced to his feet, pulling levers and flipping switches as he darted around the control column.
"Bit of a detour, it's probably nothing, weelll... could be nothing... weelll I say 'could be', might possibly, actually, be something... anyway, hope you're well rested," he babbled and she couldn't stop herself from responding to his manic grin with a smile of her own as the Tardis landed, and he held out an arm inviting her to exit the ship first.
She darted towards the door and stepped out onto new ground, the swell of emotion in her chest hitting just like her last two trips, and she didn't think she'd ever get used to it. A city skyline, lots of water with sail ships drifting across the horizon, and green grass beneath her feet that distinctly didn't smell like apples and Martha had to ask, "Where are we?"
She heard the Doctor step out of the Tardis behind her and close the doors securely before taking a deep breath and releasing it in a loud cry of excitement, "Ah! Smell that Atlantic breeze. Nice and cold. Lovely... Martha, have you met my friend?"
Turning she felt her jaw drop as she gasped, eyes going wide at the oh so familiar landmark; "Is that...? Oh, my God, that's the Statue of Liberty!" letting her eyes drink in the sight as the Doctor began a small monologue, a pattern that she was beginning to become familiar with.
"Gateway to the New World. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breath free..."
"That's so brilliant. I've always wanted to go to New York. I mean the real New York, not the new, new, new, new, new one."
"Weelll, there's the genuine article," he spun on his feet, turning his back on the iconic statue, and nodding towards the mainland, "So good, they named it twice, and with a bit of luck it'll make up for being kidnapped on an alien world," the Doctor said, throwing a grin over his shoulder as Martha moved to follow him, staying by his side, especially after New New York.
"Mind you, it was New Amsterdam originally," the Doctor continued his educational monologue, "Harder to say twice, no wonder it didn't catch on; New Amsterdam, New Amsterdam."
His easy playfulness drew a soft laugh from her, but then something on the skyline drew her attention and she remembered that the Tardis wasn't just an ordinary spaceship,"I wonder what year it is, because look, the Empire State Building's not even finished yet."
"Well, wonder no longer, I am a Time Lord after all," the Doctor told her, but she wasn't looking at him, her back turned as she scanned their more immediate surroundings, but the Doctor didn't notice, narrowing his eyes in thought as he spoke, and silently tapping into his time senses, "Work in progress. Still got a couple floors to go, and if I know my history, that makes the date somewhere around-"
"November 1st, nineteen-thirty," Martha said confidently, and the Doctor blinked, turning back to his companion in honest surprise.
"You're getting good at this," he praised swiftly, before spotting the newspaper in her hands and his lips twisted into a grimace, "That's cheating," he told her, all but retracting his earlier compliment, but Martha didn't seem to be listening to him, once again caught up in the time travel aspect of his ships abilities.
"Eighty years ago," she mused, and the Doctor watched her curiously. She took to time travel on her own planet easier than space travel to new worlds, he decided. That wasn't a problem, every companion adjusted differently and every companion had a preference, but seeing how they all reacted was one of his favourite parts, and he shushed the northern part of his brain that whispered no one had ever taken to Tardis life as naturally as Rose.
Pushing his past self back into his mental box, the Doctor returned his attention to Martha to hear her still marvelling over the fact that something that should have been firmly in the past was now very securely in their present, and future and he took the newspaper from her hands gently as she continued to marvel at their location in space and time.
."..all those old newsreels, all in black and white, like it's so far away but here we are. It's real. It's now!" she all but squealed and just like that the Doctor was hit with another memory of Rose, and felt his hearts stutter and his fingers clench around the newspaper.
"But, it's like, think about it though... Christmas. Eighteen-Sixty. Happens once, just once, and it's gone. It's just finished, and it'll never happen again. Except for you. You can go back and see days that are dead and gone a hundred thousand sunsets ago... No wonder you never stay still..."
"Not a bad life?"
"Better with two... Come on, then..."
"Come on then, you," Martha's voice crept into his mind shattering the memory and he blinked back to the present, eyes focussing on the paper in his hands and he grasped at the distraction he discovered on the front page of the New York Record as Martha grinned up at him, asking where he wanted to go.
"I think our detour just got longer," he answered, his voice low as he turned the cover back to the young doctor and glanced around their immediate surroundings once more as he let her read.
"Hooverville Mystery Deepens; What's Hooverville?" The Doctor blinked down at her and shook his head, "Let's get over to the mainland, and I'll tell you on the way, alright?" he offered, folding the paper and slipping it into the pocket of his coat as she nodded her agreement, and the pair went to find a ride into Manhattan.
It didn't take Martha long to almost forget that their reason for being there had been unusual vortex readings, and the Doctor let her weave them a path across Manhattan sightseeing on their way towards Central Park. It was only once they were within sight of the patch of green in the middle of the city that he gently took her elbow and redirected her into the park.
"Alright then, what's Hooverville?" she asked, letting out a satisfied sigh, the warm breath clouding in the cold air.
"Herbert Hoover," the Doctor started to explain, "Thirty first President of the USA, came to power a year ago, up till then New York was a boom town, the Roaring Twenties, and then..." he held his hand out, waiting to see how much Martha knew of US history.
She thought for a moment before answering, "The Wall Street Crash, yeah? When was that, 1929?"
"Yeah," he confirmed, his tone no longer playful. The thought of the damage that singular event had caused lowered his mood, and the Doctor knew that the day wasn't going to get any better, "Whole economy wiped out overnight. Thousands of people unemployed. All of a sudden, the huddled masses doubled in number with nowhere to go... So, they ended up here in Central Park." he finished, hands in his pockets and face grim.
"What, they actually live in the park?" Martha asked, and her voice all but told him not to be so ridiculous. He turned his eyes back to her and raised his eyebrows reprovingly and partially in surprise that she seemed unable to comprehend what lengths desperate people will go to to survive. Didn't student Doctor's do volunteer work any more? Or was that on Rafern Three?
In the face of his stare though, she just raised her own eyebrows in disbelief, "In the middle of the city?"
When he didn't crack a smile, or let his eyes soften, or even break their stare, Martha frowned and he could see the reality beginning to settle into her eyes as they moved deeper into the park. He was suddenly aware that Martha had probably never had to steal food to stave off hunger, or sleep in her clothes because there was no heating, and that the conditions the people in Hooverville were living under was going to be a particularly big culture shock for the human, and he sighed.
As they stepped through a roughly knocked together archway, with 'Hooverville' chipped away on it, the Doctor watched Martha take in the destitution around them, the ramshackle huts and dozens of people crowded round tiny fires in a desperate attempt to keep warm.
"Ordinary people lost their jobs; couldn't pay the rent and they lost everything," he said quietly as he surreptitiously studied the men and women they passed. Rose had said more than once that it was moments like these that were the hardest part of travelling with him. Knowing when you could help someone, and knowing when you had to leave things alone and watch ordinary people suffer.
"There are places like this all over America," he continued quickly, brushing thoughts of Rose from his mind so he could concentrate, "No one's helping them... You only come to Hooverville when there's nowhere else to go."
"I can't believe this..." he heard Martha whisper, and glanced down at her face. Her expression was of badly concealed shock, but he could see the pain there in her eyes and let his shoulders relax. Her words weren't of denial but horror, and while that wasn't a good thing for her to feel, it was better than the alternatives.
They stood a moment, watching a fight over food and a third man stepped in as arbitrator, and it gave the Doctor's companion a moment to calm down and compose herself. It was only as the crowd began to disperse that he nudged her arm gently with his elbow, and invited her to follow after him with a gentle, "Come on."
He felt her stay beside him, and took a couple of long strides to catch up with the man who had broken up and resolved the argument, "I suppose that makes you the boss around here," the Doctor offered, head tilting in greeting, and having to smother a wince at the almost unhealthy level of suspicion being aimed at him.
"And, uh... Who might you be?" the man asked as he continued moving across the clearing to stand by one of the many small fire's scattered around the park.
Martha was quick to introduce them both, and confirmed that they'd heard his name correctly, Solomon. The apparent protector of Hooverville seemed to instantly find humour in the Doctor's name, and the Time Lord couldn't stop a soft, slightly sad smile as the man went on to explain that while they had stock brokers and lawyers, he was their first Doctor.
"How many people live here?" Martha asked, and the Doctor let her satisfy her curiosity as he studied Solomon. He seemed strong, with a sense of honour and the Doctor decided that he could be helpful, especially as he seemed to take responsibility for the people residing within Hooverville.
."..I will say this about Hooverville, we are a truly equal society. Black, white, all the same. All starving. So you're welcome, both of you," he offered and the Doctor smiled. Generous too, he decided, adding to the list of qualities Solomon had been displaying so far, and genuinely kind.
"But tell me Doctor," Solomon continued, and the Doctor focussed on the man's words once more, "you're a man of learning, right? Explain this to me..." He turned and moved away from the small campfire that he'd been warming his hands against, and led them through a few narrows paths between rotting shacks before pointing up at the sky towards the unfinished Empire State Building.
"That there's going to be the tallest building in the world," Solomon stated, before turning back to the Doctor and Martha, and raising an eyebrow at them, "How come they can do that, and we got people starving in the heart of Manhattan?"
The Doctor stared up at the construction site and felt his jaw clench. Solomon had asked for an answer, but the Doctor didn't have any that were satisfactory, and it didn't seem the man truly expected the Doctor to say anything, because a moment later he was walking away and the Doctor had to force himself to swallow hard against the sudden tightness in his throat.
Rose had been right; knowing when you couldn't help anyone and making yourself walk away had always been the hardest part.
oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo
It had been a quiet couple of weeks at Torchwood since the Cyberman Incident, and Ianto had returned to work with only a nod of forgiveness shared between him and Jack. Rose had rolled her eyes at the pair and made a pot of tea, and that had been all that had been said on the matter, at least within the walls of the hub.
She knew Ianto wasn't sleeping well though when the dark circles under his eyes started to stand out, and that's when Rose started digging around for small side projects she could have Ianto help her with as a distraction. He'd leapt at the opportunity, and while he left the hub at six every evening, Rose could almost guarantee that he'd be letting himself back in sometime between one and two am most mornings.
She kept him distracted with projects, potential cases and sweet tea, and the Welshman usually got another couple of hours sleep on one of the sofa's in the early hours of the morning, the constant presence of another person nearby often keeping his nightmares at bay.
It was during one of their early morning research sessions, when Rose was on her way back to the workstations after making them both a fresh pot of tea, that she heard Jack stumble across Ianto. She'd known it would only be a matter of time before they were discovered, but it had only been a few weeks and the atmosphere around the two men was still bordering on tense.
"You shouldn't be here," she heard Jack say quietly, and Rose paused, just out of sight, waiting to see if she needed to referee the two when they thought there were no witnesses to their interaction.
There was a long moment of silence, during which Rose wished she didn't have a mug of tea in each hand so she could bite her nails, before Ianto responded with an almost cheeky; "Neither should you."
Rose grinned and peered round the corner, watching Ianto move towards the computer they'd been working on with mild confidence. He knew that Rose had ok'd his being there, Jack didn't and that let the Welshman turn his back on Jack and continue working.
She saw Jack step out of his office, suspenders hanging loose, and she briefly wondered what had woken him. She pulled back a little to make sure she remained unseen, but Jack had his eyes fixed on Ianto as he moved to stand behind him. He seemed to take a bracing breath, before he let a hand rest on the man's shoulder and Rose smiled to herself when Ianto didn't brush him off, just glanced around a little surprised, as Jack queried what he was working on.
Ianto took his own version of a bracing breath, but let it out in a tired sigh as he answered, "Funny sort of weather patterns," he started to explain, glancing over his shoulder at Jack and spotting Rose behind him.
"Is that my tea?" he asked, offering her a smile and Rose returned it easily as she pushed off from the wall and approached, but Jack didn't turn, eyes staring at the screen Ianto had pulled up.
"Yup, careful it's hot," she said, passing Ianto a mug as she frowned up at Jack, "What is it?" she asked, recognising the odd look of concern on his features, and the barely there furrowing between his brows.
"Could be nothing," he answered after a moment, and Rose raised an eyebrow at him as Ianto took a sip of his drink to hide a smile at the look of unimpressed impatience she was giving their boss.
"Alright, fine... It might be something... but I need to check something before I'm sure," Jack defended himself gently, folding his arms across his chest, "I'll need you and Gwen to come with me to an exhibition this afternoon, there's someone I need to speak to."
Rose nodded, surprised but more than willing to trust that Jack would tell her what she needed to know, "Sure, I'll send her a text in a couple of hours, why don't you go have a shower, get dressed, there's a pot of tea in the kitchen," Rose offered easily, eyes worried and Jack offered her a mildly reassuring smile before nodding, and moving away from the desk to do as she'd suggested.
Rose could feel Ianto glancing between them, and turned to meet his questioning gaze.
"Are you two...?" he seemed to hesitate, and Rose raised an eyebrow, wondering if Ianto was going where she thought he was.
"None of us really know much about Jack," he started again, "but you seem like you've known him a long time,"
Rose nodded and drank some of her tea, "Jack travelled with me and a mutual friend for just under a year, we know each other pretty well," she answered, but Ianto shifted in his seat.
"Are you and he..."
"Best friends, yeah," she cut in quickly, "he's like an insanely over protective big brother," she whined, breaking the tension Ianto's hesitancy had built up around them and answering his unspoken question at the same time, "Hogs the shower, vets my boyfriends, tells me way more about sexual exploits than I ever wanted to know," she complained, grinning when Ianto flushed bright red, and started spluttering as he turned back to the computer, eyes wide.
"Oh, well... That's... uh... I mean..."
When she laughed he managed to stop stumbling over his words, and just glared at her for a long moment, cheeks still flushed pink "I hope you choke on your tea, Rose Tyler," he told her gently, but it just drew a fresh round of giggles from the blonde.
"What, exactly, are we doing here?" Gwen asked several hours later as she and Rose followed Jack down a small street, having left the SUV in a nearby car park.
"Dunno, but if we're not quick, the tires on the car won't be there when we come back," Rose muttered, looking around the rough area. She saw Gwen throw a grin at her, but Jack was too busy answering her question.
"I got an invitation from an old friend, two days ago... here we go," he said, holding an arm out towards a run down auditorium and Gwen glanced at the timetable on the board outside.
"Faeries? Are you kidding me?" Gwen asked, her voice dropping as she studied Jack's expression intently. Rose had to admit, she was surprised herself, but she could see Jack's amusement at Gwen's blatant disbelief and frowned.
"Just because they're called Faeries, doesn't mean that's what they are, Gwen," Rose answered, thinking of the Gelf and how they'd portrayed themselves as benevolent beings and Jack pointed at her nodding.
"Right."
He lead them both inside and into a darkened room with an older woman standing at the front speaking, a projector with pictures her only accompaniment. The room could have held a couple of hundred people, but there were only a handful of listener's scattered around.
The woman paused her presentation when they entered and smiled at Jack when he waved. As she continued speaking, Jack shot her a bright smile before urging Rose and Gwen to be silent and guiding them to a row of seats near the back of the room.
"I don't believe this," Gwen muttered, and before Rose could chastise her, Jack had already shushed the woman. Rose could see how seriously Jack was taking the tales, and so turned her attention to the images on the projector, frowning in thought. The creatures were beautiful, there was no doubt, and if Jack was taking this woman seriously, then Rose didn't doubt the validity of her claims, but what these 'faeries' had to do with the weather patterns that had put the worried frown on Jack's face that morning, still eluded her, so she rallied her patience and waited.
She shot a glance at Jack, but the look on his face made her throat close up and her stomach tighten. It was the same look he shot at her when he thought she was being particularly amazing. The tight genuine smile, soft eyes, relaxed features and Rose suddenly knew with absolute certainty that Jack knew this woman, and cared for her deeply.
She didn't know what the woman said, too focussed on Jack's expression, but suddenly he shook his head and frowned.
"Wrong; she always gets it wrong," he complained, shaking his head and the woman finished her presentation, "Come on, I'll introduce you," he said to the two women seated beside him, and casually stood, letting a soft smile touch his features as they moved past the few listeners now leaving the room, and approached the woman, Rose and Gwen following a few steps behind as Jack gently tugged his friend into a tight hug.
"Oh Jack, I'm so glad you could make it," she said as Jack released her.
"Wouldn't miss it, Estelle... these are some friends of mine, Gwen and Rose," he introduced the women, and Rose held out her hand, taking Estelle's in a firm but gentle grasp.
"Lovely to meet you, your photographs are amazing!" she said, and the older woman laughed, seemingly torn between flattered and embarrassed.
"They're rather shaky, I took quite a few but only showed the best ones, even they weren't as clear as I'd have liked," she answered, her cheeks turning a soft pink as Rose beamed at her.
"Do you have the other's with you?" Jack asked, and the woman rolled her eyes at him.
"Of course," she replied, grabbing Jack's elbow and steering him over to the table.
"What are we doing here?" Gwen muttered to Rose softly, "Faeries? This has got to be a joke, right?"
Rose just shook her head with a sigh, "Imagine for a moment you'd seen a weevil for the first time, before you knew about aliens... what would you think you were seeing?" Rose asked, and Gwen frowned.
"I don't have to imagine, that's part of how I found Torchwood... I thought it was a mask, or some kind of acid damage to someone's face..."
"Right," Rose agreed, "So 'alien' isn't the first thought you jump to, yeah? So if you see small white creatures that glow, and have a humanoid shape with wings, what are you going to call them?" she asked, and Gwen went pale as what Jack and Rose had been trying to explain to her finally clicked.
"Oh god... so you're saying that what she thinks are Faeries are..."
"They could be anything, but Jack seems to know more than he's saying right now, so I'm trusting him," Rose answered with a shrug as she watched the American pour over Estelle's pictures, "Come on, we'd better take a seat, it look like he's going to be a while," Rose said with a sigh, and she and Gwen took seats in the front row where they were close enough to listen to the quiet conversation between Jack and Estelle.
Jack was faster than Rose had expected, and it only took him around twenty minutes to flip through the slides Estelle had with her, putting a few up on the projector to get a better look at them, but most he peered at briefly before replacing into their box.
"Estelle, when did you take these?" Jack's question made Rose jump in her seat, and she glared at the amused grin Gwen was shooting at her for her distraction.
"A couple of night's ago, I left you that voice mail the next morning, I knew you'd want to see them," the woman replied, leaning patiently against the table that had her belongings spread across it, watching Jack rummage through everything with a smile.
"Where?"
"In Roundstone wood."
"That's not far from here," Gwen threw in, eyes flicking between Jack's unreadable expression, and Estelle's kind smile.
"No, about a half hour drive I suppose," she agreed, turning glittering eyes back on the American, "It is so good to see you again, Jack, it's been far too long- Oh look, there's the wood," she exclaimed, interrupting herself when Jack placed a new slide onto the projector, but Rose had been watching Jack's expression and caught the shadow pass behind his eyes.
"What is it, Jack, what's wrong?" she asked softly, watching his shoulders stiffen at her questions, but what surprised Rose was when it was Estelle who answered her.
"Oh, Jack and I have always disagreed about Faeries. I only ever see the good ones, he only ever sees the bad!" she explained, and Rose raised an eyebrow.
"Maybe you're both blind to what the other can perceive?" Rose offered, drawing a laugh from Estelle.
"They're all bad," Jack shot back, and Estelle shook her head and tapped the pen in her hand against his arm in reproof.
"No, I refuse to believe that,"
"Well... I suppose one person's good could be another person's evil," Gwen offered softly, playing mediator, but Rose could see the determination behind Jack's cold gaze. To have such a solid certainty, she knew he had to have some kind of proof or personal experience. She'd never known the 51st century man to be closed minded about anything, always willing to bend unless he had a damn good reason not to.
."..Oh Jack, if only you'd seen them out there in the wood!" Estelle's elation drew Roses gaze, and no matter her friends concerns, the woman's sheer delight drew a smile to her face, "They were happy, they were dancing and the faerie lights were shining," she sighed softly, and Rose could see some of Jack's defensiveness leak out of his frame as he smiled down at Estelle.
"Do you have any more photo's?" he asked softly, and Estelle glanced up and met his eyes before sighing, apparently resigned to the fact that she wasn't going to change his mind, before nodding in response.
"Yes. At home." she told him, dropping her hands to her sides in surrender.
"We need to see them all," Jack said, and Rose stood up, ready once more to follow after her friend.
The Doctor and Martha quickly found where Solomon had gone, and found him clearing up around the front of the shack he'd emerged from earlier.
"So," the Doctor began again, and Solomon's head whipped round in surprise, "Men going missing, is this true?" he asked softly, unfolding the newspaper and holding it up, but Solomon just stared at it for a moment or two before taking it from the Doctor's hands.
"It's true, alright," he confirmed, and seemed to hesitate a moment before inviting the two travellers inside his tent, taking the paper with him.
"What does 'missing' mean, exactly?" the Doctor asked as he held the tent flap open for Martha and she ducked inside, hands rubbing along her arms to ward of the November chill, "People must come and go here all the time, it's not like anyone's keeping a register..."
His words prompted a verbal invite as Solomon took off his hat and sat down, seeming to get comfortable as he prepared to answer the Doctor's questions, "Come on in," he told them, "and close the front, it'll keep what warmth there is in," he instructed Martha gently.
He waited until the two friends were seated, Martha opposite, and the Doctor beside him, chin propped up on his hand, before Solomon began to explain, shaking the paper to illustrate his point.
"This is different," he started, and Martha tipped her head.
"In what way?"
Solomon paused again, but this time the Doctor could see that the hesitation was caused by reluctance, and a dash of resignation, and it told him that the man's concerns had been brushed aside one to many times. He didn't want to be brushed off again.
"Someone takes 'em," he finally answered, and the Doctor frowned, "at night. We'll hear something, someone calls out for help but... by the time we get there they're gone. Like they vanish into thin air," Solomon sighed, a defeated slump to his head and shoulders.
"And you're sure someone's taking them?" the Doctor asked, and he could almost feel the smack Rose would have landed to the back of his head before the words had finished passing his lips. Of course the man was sure, it was written in every tired line of his face.
"Doctor, when you got next ta' nothin' you hold on ta' the little you got," Solomon said, his eyes earnest, and the Doctor found himself nodding in agreement, even as Solomon continued, "Knife, blanket, yah take it with yah. You don't leave bread uneaten, fire still burning..."
"Have you been to the police?" Martha asked, but the softness to her voice suggested she already knew the answer, and Solomon turned to her and nodded.
"Yeah, we tried that. 'Nother deadbeat goes missing, big deal..."
"So the question is who's taking them, and what for..." The Doctor said, eyebrows drawing together with a frown as large portions of his mind began hurtling off in various direction to try work on the clues it had already gathered.
"Sol!" came a shout, and everyone's heads turned to the front of the tent as a young man ran in, "Solomon, Mr Diagoras is here..."
Without another word, Solomon stood and moved to follow the young man, and all the Doctor could do was respond to Martha's silent question's with a shrug, and follow the man outside.
What they found, less than a hundred yards from Solomon's tent, was a greasy looking human in a sharp suit with what appeared to be two bodyguards either side of him, standing on a small box and offering work to the crowd of Hooverville citizens gathering around him.
."..Sure look like you could use the money!" the Doctor heard as they approached, and the teen who had run to get Solomon shouted out from the crowd.
"Yeah? What's the money?"
"A dollar a day," Diagoras replied, and the Doctor frowned. With all the currencies in all the time periods in the universe, he wasn't completely sure, but that didn't sound like very much, even for this time period, but he stayed silent. From the mutterings going around the crowd, no one seemed happy with the offered wage, but many were desperate enough to consider it.
"What's the work?" Solomon was the next to shout, and again his answer came swiftly.
"A little trip down the sewers," the information was met with louder groans and complaints that Diagoras spoke over as he continued to describe the job, and the Doctor watched the discontent of the crowd growing. "Got a tunnel collapsed, needs clearing and fixing... any takers?"
"A dollar a day? That's slave wage," Solomon called back again, and many of the crowd chimed their agreements, which is explained why there had been no hands up to accept the job just yet, "and men don't always come back up, do they?" Solomon said. He clearly knew the answer to that question but Diagoras was suddenly nervous with the direction Solomon's questions were leading the conversation and smiled trying to brush the topic aside, instantly raising the Doctor's own suspicions.
"Accidents happen!"
"What do you mean? What sort of accidents?" the Doctor called. Sure sewer tunnels could collapse, but the crowds reaction seemed extreme for what should have been a fairly uncommon occurrence, but instead of answering Diagoras deflected and something in the back of the Doctor's mind, some instinct, set off a mauve alert and he found his hand raising.
"Enough with the questions!" Diagoras shouted, and the Doctor shook his head slightly, the frown fixed on his face.
"Oh n-no no no, I'm volunteering, I'll go," he said, turning to Martha when he saw her hand raising out the corner of his eye. Her eyebrows raised, and very slowly she threatened him with a quiet, "I'll kill you for this," and he couldn't stop the soft giggle that escaped him, a thrilled smile sliding across his face. It was nice to have his life threatened by someone he knew wouldn't actually follow through on their word, and Martha was so serious about it, he couldn't seem to wipe the grin from his face.
Seeing him and Martha with their hands in the air, the teen also volunteered, and Solomon reluctantly followed. The Doctor didn't know if it was curiosity, or desperation that spurred them sign up, or a combination of both, but he was determined in that moment to make sure all four of them came out of the sewers in once piece.
While the two bodyguards escorted them across town to the sewer entrance they needed, Diagoras got into a car and left, announcing he'd meet them there. Although Solomon introduced them to the teenager, Frank, not much was said on the walk from Hooverville to the sewer entrance, and when the four workers got there, Diagoras was waiting as promised.
"Alright then, here's a torch for each of yah, some rope, a couple of shovels, two radio's and a few tools to repair the collapse once you've cleared the way," he explained, handing over the meagre equipment and preceding them into the tunnel. Once at the bottom he waved them down and slowly all four descended into the dark.
Diagoras waited until Frank hopped off the bottom rung of the ladder before continuing his instructions, "Turn left," he said, waving his hand in the direction they needed to go, "then walk roughly a half a mile, follow tunnel two seven three an' the falls right ahead of yah, yah can't miss it."
"And when do we get our dollar?" Frank asked, his eyes wide and voice demanding over the squeals of the rats.
"When you come back up," Diagoras answered, meeting the boys eyes and staring him out.
"And if we don't come back up?" the Doctor asked, taking the man's attention away from Frank. Diagoras locked his gaze with the Doctors then, but the Time Lord wasn't some human teenager and didn't waver.
"Then I got no one to pay."
"Don't worry, we'll be back," Solomon said firmly, and Martha nodded, adding her own "let's hope so," to the confident declaration, but the Doctor was still staring down Diagoras, and the human hadn't yet glanced away.
It wasn't many creatures who could hold his gaze, but something gave Diagoras the confidence to do so and that alone gave the Doctor some concern. It was only when he could hear the other three begin to take the left turn that he slowly took a step backwards, and turned, holding the human's gaze for as long as possible before breaking it and following after Martha. Even then, he could feel the mans cold eyes on his back, and he could feel his body preparing to run or fight.
There was more going on in these sewers than a collapsed tunnel, and something told him they were going to walk right into it.
"We just gotta stick together," he could hear Frank telling Martha as he caught up with the other three, "It's easy to get lost, s'like a huge rabbit warren... you could hide an army down here," he continued, and the Doctor sighed.
"That's what I'm worried about," he muttered to himself, wincing at the echoes the tunnel caused around them, but his voice had been drowned out by the splashing of their feet and Frank's voice as he continued to describe the sewers to Martha. The slight tremble to the young man's voice said that he didn't want to be here, so the Doctor let Frank fill the silence with comforting babble as they walked. A few glances at Martha made him think she was doing the same thing, so he busied himself with studying their surroundings, making note of anything that would help orientate them so they could easily find their way back out.
"So, this Diagoras bloke, who is he then?" he asked Solomon sometime later, something about the smart suited man continued to rub the Doctor the wrong way and he hadn't made it to over 900 years old by ignoring those instincts.
"Couple o' months ago, he was just another foreman," Solomon answered, "Now... it seems like he's running most of Manhattan."
The Doctor frowned, turning the man's words over in his mind, "How'd he managed that, then?"
"These are strange times," Solomon said with a humourless laugh to his voice, "Man can go from bein' a king o' the hill to the lowest of the low overnight... Just for some folks it works the other way round."
While some part of his mind catalogued Solomon's words, the Doctor had been continuing to watch their surroundings, and was suddenly glad he could focus on multiple thoughts at once when the group almost walked straight over something that looked decidedly not right, especially for a sewer system on Earth during the nineteen thirties.
"Woah!" he called, and came to a slow stop before the glowing object just as Martha leant round him with her torch and bent down to get a better look.
"Is it radioactive, or something?" she asked, and the Doctor placed his lantern on the ground before crouching, glasses sliding onto his face, even as his respiratory bypass kicked in. Martha crouched beside him and promptly gagged.
"It's gone off, whatever it is!" she choked out, her hand pressed against her face in an attempt to ward off the smell. Without waiting for his companion to adjust, the Doctor leant forward and carefully slid his fingers underneath the glowing green mass of what seemed to be flesh of some kind, bringing it up from the ground and close to his face so he could get a better look at it.
."..and you've got to pick it up," Martha muttered, clearly disgusted. Her voice said she couldn't be less amused by this decision, but the Doctor was too focussed to think up a witty come back, watching the strange jellyfish like tendrils hanging from the bottom of the mass, something familiar tingling in the back of his mind, faded memories stirring.
He brought it close to his face, mouth opening, and nearly jumped out of his skin when, clear as Martha beside him, he heard Rose's voice, "Don't you dare lick that thing, you don't even know what it is yet!"
He drew a deep breath in surprise, shutting off his respiratory bypass, as he answered her in his mind, ' I wasn't planning on it! '
' Yeah, right, ' she muttered, before the Doctor remembered that she was gone, and her words were nothing more than an imagination of what she might have said. He frowned at the gloopy discovery and ran his thumb over it as he began analysing the scents that his surprise had inadvertently allowed him to collect.
"Shine your torch through it?" he asked Martha, before nodding to himself as the glow of the torch combined with some components he'd found in the smell meant that he now knew what it was, "Composite organic matter," he announced, flesh grown in a lab from more than one type of DNA, and he raised his eyes to his companion, taking a small measure of amusement from the horrified disgust on her features, while her hand covered her mouth and nose as best it could.
"Martha? Medical opinion?" he asked, and part of him admitted that his question was mostly to see if she'd remove her hand long enough to answer him.
"It's not human, I know that!" she said, her voice shaking a little, and the Doctor nodded, a swell of pride running through him when she made a concerted effort not to shy away from the stench again.
"No, it's not..." he confirmed, but that memory was still tugging at him, something about the look of the thing was familiar to him. Whatever it was, the real question had become, how had it gotten over a mile into the sewers?
Just like that another thought sparked and connected in his head and he rose to his feet swiftly, shoulders suddenly tensed, "and I'll tell you something else... we must be at least half a mile in, and I don't see any sign of a collapse, do you?" he asked the others, eyes shooting around them, suddenly more than a little wary. The sewers were narrow, nowhere to run or hide if there was something down there with them, and the jellyfish like creature now in his pocket suggested exactly that to the Time Lord, "Soo why did Mister Diagoras send us down here?" he continued as the other three shone their torches around them trying, almost desperately, to find some kind of collapse that would make the Doctor's terrifyingly logical line of thought obsolete.
"Where are we now? What's up above?" Martha asked simply and the Doctor ran their path along the sewer tunnels through his mind, and overlaid it onto the geography from the surface before answering.
"Weelll... We're right underneath Manhattan, actually," the Doctor told her, glancing up at the curved top of the tunnel to stare at the wet stone above them speculatively and they all took a moment to stand in silence, before Solomon almost physically shook himself.
"Well it's gotta be down here, he's got no reason to offer pay when there's no work needs doing... He probably misjudged the distance... We keep going we're bound to hit the collapse soon," the man announced and Frank nodded his agreement, eager for a less pessimistic outlook than the Doctor's words had painted, and the Time Lord nodded.
"Right, yes, well let's get going then," he agreed, and Martha raised an eyebrow at him, as the other two started marching through the tunnels, their pace quickened by fear.
"Keep your eyes open," the Doctor said to his companion, his own worried gaze currently fixed on Solomon and Frank as they moved ahead. He felt Martha nod beside him before they both broke into a light jog to catch up with the two men.
When Rose, Jack and Gwen arrived at Estelle's home, all three helped the woman unload her equipment from her car and carried it inside for her, letting Estelle direct them on where to place it.
"Thank you Jack, girls," Estelle said once the items had been put down, and turned to find Rose standing beside her smiling.
"Who's this handsome guy, then?" she asked and Estelle beamed at her proudly.
"This is Moses," she introduced, and as Rose picked up the large black and white cat, Gwen came over to pet the creature while Estelle picked up a folder and handed it to Jack with a smile.
"They're mostly just pictures of the area," she warned him before moving back to Rose and relieving her of the purring bundle of fur.
"Come on, my darling, it's quite time you went outside, isn't it?" she murmured to the creature. Gwen watched her leave the room before tugging Rose over to the pictures lining the mantelpiece and pointing out the one that had caught her eye from a distance.
"Rose, is that...?" she half asked, hesitating a moment when Rose's brown eyes seemed sad for a long moment
"This is you," Gwen called over to Jack, even as she picked up the frame photograph for a closer look, and missed the tightening of Roses jaw.
"Sorry?" Jack asked, lifting his eyes from the folder of pictures in his hands before wandering over to join Rose and Gwen in-front of the fireplace. He took the picture and stared at it for a moment before sighing, "No, that's my dad... He and Estelle were quite an item, once upon a time; they were inseparable."
He carefully avoided looking at Rose. He could already feel the weight of her eyes on him but didn't want to explain while they were standing in Estelle's living room with faeries rampaging through Cardiff, but Gwen wasn't willing to leave it alone.
"Then why did they part?" she asked, and Rose cleared her throat slightly, drawing the brunette's attention away from Jack.
"Military uniform, I'd say the war separated them," she said, her voice tired and a little sad.
"He was posted abroad," Jack confirmed, replacing the picture Gwen had picked up, before scooping up an unframed one and handing it to Rose. The new image showed him and Estelle sitting on a wooden gate, looking exactly like what they had probably been. Young lovers. "She volunteered to work on the land. It just... happened that way." he finished, returning to the folder Estelle had left him with, his back to Gwen and Rose.
Gwen studied the picture in silence for a few minutes before she left the living room, heading towards the garden and Estelle.
"She's not going to let that go, you know," Rose warned gently, moving to stand beside him and Jack's blue eyes were suddenly very tired as he nodded.
"I know," he confirmed, and for a long moment they shared the living-room in silence before he eventually looked over at the blonde "you're not going to ask?"
Rose lifted her own tired eyes from the picture still held in her hand and shrugged a shoulder, "I don't need to," she answered softly, "You love her. I don't need to know any more than that until you want to tell me more."
Jack smiled then, his frame relaxing as he shook his head.
"What, did you think I was going to grill you on your love life since we parted ways? No thanks, Jack, I made that mistake once before," she teased gently, smiling when she managed to draw a gentle laugh from the Captain as he went back to flipping through the folder, and she returned the photograph to it's place on the mantle.
"Come on then, let's go rescue your lady love from Gwen's detective skills, shall we?" Rose teased, ignoring the man's eye-roll as Rose led the way out into the garden.
"Estelle," she called, hearing Jack following close behind her, "If you see these faeries again could you give Jack or me a call? I'd love to see them myself and you seem to be my best chance at that," Rose explained, and Estelle beamed at her, thrilled.
"Absolutely!" she promised, and Jack sighed.
"Night or day, it doesn't matter, just call, ok? and be careful... it's important to me," he added softly, resting an arm lightly around Estelle's shoulder as she beamed up at him.
"But Jack, I've nothing to worry about," she argued gently.
"Just be careful, please?" he asked gently.
"Can't hurt to be careful, better safe than sorry, yeah?" Rose reaffirmed, and Estelle paused a moment before agreeing with a firm nod. Jack pulled her into a gentle hug, pressing a kiss to the crown of her head, and Estelle leant against him, her eyes closing. Rose couldn't stop a soft smile creeping over her face at the implicit trust in the motion and she nudged Gwen lightly, moving them both away from Jack and Estelle, giving them a moment of privacy before they had to leave.
The two women made their way out the garden gate and stood on the street, leaning against the stone wall surrounding Estelle's house in comfortable silence while they waited for Jack to say his goodbye's. After a moment or two Gwen shifted, and Rose could feel her staring.
"It was daft, thinking that picture was Jack... it was old, discoloured," she said softly, and Rose turned to her and shook her head.
"Nah, he looks like his dad, it was an easy mistake to make," Rose offered but she could feel her heart pounding when Gwen's eyes narrowed.
"You didn't bat an eyelash when I said it was Jack though, you weren't even surprised, it's like you were thinking the same thing." Rose didn't really know how to respond to the woman's speculation because she was absolutely right, but before Gwen could say anything else Jack emerged from the house and stepped onto the street, leading the way back towards where they'd parked the SUV at a brisk pace, the folder of pictures from Estelle tucked under one arm.
"Jack?" Rose called questioningly, and the man sighed and slowed a half step to let the two women catch up.
"Estelle shouldn't be living in town; she belongs in the countryside," he told them softly, shaking his head. Rose slipped her hand into his and he shot her a grateful smile.
"How often do you get to see her?" Gwen asked from his other side.
"We meet up now and again."
Rose squeezed his hand gently, reassuringly. She knew he wouldn't see Estelle often, in case the woman realised that he wasn't ageing as he should.
"Whenever she sees her faeries?" Gwen questioned further, and Rose felt Jack stiffen all over again.
"She calls them faeries, I don't," he said darkly, and Rose nudged his arm, cautiously pulling him out of the dark mood he was sliding towards.
"What do you call them?" she asked, wondering if she was finally going to find out what was worrying him so deeply about these particular beings.
"They've never really had a proper name," Jack sighed, "They're old, something from way back at the dawn of time... How do you put a name to something like that? Apart from being deceptively innocent and misleading, faeries are as good a title as any, I suppose."
"Are we still talking alien?" Gwen asked, nose wrinkling in consternation at his words, and Jack shook his head.
"No, worse." he answered darkly, voice dipping low.
"How come?"
"If they're not alien, then they belong here, which means we can't just send them on their way," Rose answered, releasing a sigh of her own.
"They're part of us, part of our world," Jack agreed, "But we know next to nothing about them. We pretend that we understand them and what they want, we see bright lights and pretend to know what they look like. We imagine them happy, see tiny wings bathed in moonlight, something ethereal and beautiful-"
"and deadly," Rose finished, drawing Jack's gaze, and she saw the hint of fear there hidden behind blue eyes.
"Deadly?" Gwen asked, and Rose nodded, "Jack wouldn't be this worried otherwise," she said and he tugged on her hand, pulling her slightly off balance so the blonde stumbled.
"Stop translating my expressions for my employees," he teased, and Rose grinned up at him a moment until his soft smile faded, and he continued explaining the creatures to Gwen.
"Think dangerous, think of something you can only half see like a glimpse, something in the corner of your eye. A shadow. A touch of myth and legend, an echo of the spirit world with just a dash of reality all jumbled together."
He stopped walking then, and handed the folder of pictures to Rose before turning back to Gwen, his tumultuous description continuing as he used his hands to try and articulate the miasma of facets these so called faeries we made up of, "Old moments and memories that are frozen in amongst it all, like debris spinning around a ringed planet... Tossing, turning, whirling... backwards and forwards through time..."
He paused then lips pressed together sharply, and he shot a concerned glance back down the street towards Estelle's house, before shaking himself and turning back, starting to move off down the street again, Rose and Gwen once more either side of him. "If this is them, then we have to find them, figure out what they want, before all hell break's loose."
"Backwards and forwards through time?" Rose asked, head lifting, and Jack stared down at her for a moment.
"In the worst way," he confirmed, and watched the spark of hope extinguish with a sigh, before wrapping his around her shoulders and pulling her into a hug as they made their way back to the car.
They'd been walking for another twenty minutes, by the Doctor's count, with Solomon and Frank desperately searching for the damage they'd been sent to fix.
"We're way beyond half a mile. There's no collapse, nothing," Solomon declared eventually as they came to another intersection that looked all but identical to the last four they'd been through.
"That Diagoras bloke, was he lying?" Martha asked and the Doctor nodded.
"Look like it."
"So why'd he want people to come down here?" Frank asked, and the Doctor's jaw tightened as the teenager voiced the concern than had been floating around the Time Lord's mind since they discovered the composite organic matter he still couldn't identify.
"Solomon, I think it's time you took these two back, I'll be much quicker on my own," he said quietly, a slight resignation in his tone. He was fully expecting a refusal from Martha at least, but the hair on the back of his neck was starting to stand on end, the whole situation they were in felt like a trap and he still didn't know exactly what they were dealing with.
There were too many variables, and the Doctor didn't want to drag Martha into another situation where she'd be in danger, and concentrating on protecting her was going to take up resources that he could ill afford in such a precarious situation.
Martha's refusal didn't come, however, and he would have been surprised by that but there was suddenly a wet squealing sound and all four of them began turning their heads, the echo of the tunnels making it impossible for the humans to determine the direction the sound had come from.
"What the hell was that?" Solomon asked, his voice low and quiet, wariness in every line of his body.
"Hello!?" Frank suddenly yelled, in complete contrast to the older man and everyone span to the teenager, Martha shushing him violently, fear painted across her face, even as Solomon sighed his name in resignation that whatever was out there now probably knew exactly where they were and if Solomon was sure of one thing, that sound was no sewer rat.
"What if it's one of the folk gone missing? You'd be scared and half mad down here on your own!" Frank whispered, glancing between Martha and Solomon, defending his shout.
"Did that sound like a person to you?" Martha demanded, her own voice soft, but the Doctor asked a different question and one Frank was more willing to answer.
"Do you think they're still alive?"
The fact that he was even considering listening to the teen seemed to make Frank relax and while his voice was still a whisper, the tension eased from him.
"Heck, we ain't seen no bodies down here, maybe they just got lost?"
The squeals came again and once more the humans were disorientated by the echo of the tunnels, but this time the Doctor had been ready for the sound, and his head spun towards the source.
"I know I never heard somebody make a sound like that," Solomon muttered, but Frank would not be deterred.
"Where's it coming from? Sounds like there's more than one of 'em..." he muttered, and Solomon swung his torch down one of the tunnels.
"That way," he said, but the Doctor shook his head, drifting a few steps away from the group, "No... this way," he corrected, the beam of his torch lighting up a figure crouched close to the ground, almost out of sight.
"Doctor?" Martha whispered, her voice shaking, but he was focussed on the figure half hidden in the dark.
"Who are you?" Solomon called, but the shape didn't move or make another sound.
"Are you lost?" Frank tried, taking a few steps forward until he was level with the Doctor, "Can you understand me? I.. I've been thinking a lot about folks lost down here..."
"It's alright, Frank," the Doctor stopped him, placing a hand on the young man's shoulder as he moved to take another step towards the being still crouched further down the tunnel, "Just stay back a moment, let me have a look..." he suggested, waiting until Frank moved back to stand beside Solomon, before he took slow cautious steps towards their most recent discovery.
"He's got a point though, my mate Frank," the Doctor started, letting his gob run free as a calming influence on the humans behind him, and potentially seeking a way to communicate with the creature in front of him. "I'd hate to be stuck down here, all on my own... but we know the way out... daylight... If you come with us..." he offered, finally reaching the creature and slowly lowering into a crouch beside it.
"Oh, but what are you?" he whispered softly to the pig's head staring back at him, attached to a humanoid form. The eyes told a tale, sadness and pain, self hate and rejection, and the Doctor knew in his gut this wasn't normal, or right, that this had been done to someone and his mind began spinning as he remembered the pig-alien decoy that the Slitheen had utilised when they'd tried to take over Britain via ten Downing Street.
He remembered how the soldiers had shot that creature when it had been scared and alone but Solomon's hesitant question broke him out of the memories before he could get lost in thoughts of Rose. He knew where the memories of that day led.
"I could save the world but lose you..."
"Is that... er... some kind of carnival mask?" Solomon called, and the Doctor turned back to the three humans briefly, not willing to take his gaze from the pig-man for more than a few seconds, not until he knew more about it.
"No, it's real," he said, and the moment he met the creature's eyes again it let out a small squeal of sound and the Doctor could almost feel his hearts breaking.
"I'm sorry," he said, voice full of emotion, "but listen to me... I promise I can help," he offered, mind already spinning with planets that would accept this creature, even if he couldn't reverse the process, "Who did this to you?" he asked, his hand stretching out slowly to rest again the creature's arm, it's eyes watching his movements warily.
"Doctor, I think you'd better get back here," Martha called just as he saw a shadow move to his left and his head whipped round. There were more of the creatures, but they didn't have the same sad eyes as the one he'd been kneeling before, and as more of them appeared he rose to his feet quickly, and began backing away.
"Doctor!" Martha shouted, and he could hear the panic in her voice.
"Actually... Yes, that's a good point," he answered her, as though his movements didn't already show that he'd listened and reacted to her warning.
"They're following you," she said, and he could feel the tension crawling up his spine as his body began to produce the chemicals it needed for fight or flight.
"Yeah, I noticed that, thanks..." He was sure the words would have been more of a snarl if he wasn't trying so very hard to keep his rising panic from leeching out into his voice as more and more of the pig-man emerged from further down the tunnel, outnumbering them easily at three or four to one.
"Well then, Martha, Frank, Solomon..." he started, never taking his eyes from the menacing look in these new creature's eyes, and he heard Martha whimper out a soft, "What?"
"Err... Umm... Basically... RUN!" he shouted, and when he turned to do exactly that, he was pleased to see that the three humans had apparently pre-empted him and made a break for it almost before he'd issued the order. Like any animal, the moment they turned their backs and began to flee, the creature's gave chase, and they began barrelling through the tunnels, each turning looking the same.
With no time to read the signs or look for familiar landmarks, the group simply ran, the Doctor making sure he was between the humans and the pig creatures, pushing the group to move faster all the time. They needed enough space between them and the creatures so they could climb out of the sewers when they found a way out.
He refused to consider that this time 'when' might actually be an 'if'.
